“Doing art and balancing relationships has always been hard for me,” says DJ MU$A. The Denver musician, DJ and producer is explaining the genesis of his new mixed CD, “My Robot Girlfriend,” available for free download at the end of this article. “I’d just gone through a tough breakup with this super-cool girl who I was a complete asshole to,” he chuckles.
And so, like so many artists before him, Musa Bailey turned his self-inflicted broken heart into a work of art. Unlike many, however, MU$A’s work of art — which will be released with an -sponsored party at the Meadowlark tonight — is a slow-jam pastiche of classic soul, indie rock, electronic music, R&B, TV and movie samples, Top 40, stand-up comedy and more, with a hard drive where its heart should be.
To make its thesis clear, “My Robot Girlfriend” opens with an extended sample from a Stephen Colbert interview with David Levy, the Scottish chess master and author of “Love and Sex with Robots.” Levy explains research that suggests humans, in the very near future, will fall in — and make — love with man-machines.
“I’ve been bugging off ‘Blade Runner’ and what it means to be a partner,” says MU$A. “And we’re also contending with Facebook and Twitter, and they almost become like a lover. They give you this weird kind of happiness. Facebook makes people happy. It’s like this new kind of love. And I was wondering, ‘Am I going to end up like Harrison Ford and have to marry a replicant?'”
And while that might sound ridiculous, that question led MU$A back to the tools of his trade: turntables, mixers, music production software and his beloved music collection.
“I did this project this winter,” he recounts, “locked away in a friend’s house with a fireplace and a rocking chair. I love winters in Denver.”
And so, with a broken heart, a fireplace, a rocking chair and a laptop, DJ MU$A set out to create his robot girlfriend. Using the skills he’s honed over decades as a musician and DJ, including years spent touring and recording with Saul Williams, the producer created a 76-minute collage of the sounds of love, sex, loneliness and technology. In some cases, the DJ borrows whole songs — like Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend” or Chante Moore’s “Love’s Taken Over” — and warps, enhances and reprograms them with samples from Goapele, Daft Punk and . In other cases, snippets of electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos enter into an unholy matrimony with Whitney Houston and Lil Wayne, Bill Hicks provides a fitting coda to an SWV song, or Bobby Brown tries to get a three-way going with Sade and Jill Scott, until he’s interrupted by Michael Jackson.
It might be tempting to call “My Robot Girlfriend” a mashup record, and it’s partly true. While that term has been much maligned — especially by DJs, who criticize mashups for being facile and unmusical — mashing records together has been at the core of the art of DJing since Kool Herc. But where the classic mashup takes the vocal from one song and slaps it on top of the instrumental from another, MU$A slaps three, four and five different songs together, carefully keeping them in sync and in key, creating something entirely new, somewhere between a mashup producer like Freelance Hellraiser and a manic sound editor like Girl Talk.
Throughout the process of making “My Robot Girlfriend,” MU$A was inspired by technology — not only the technology that we’re falling in love with (“Sometimes, a thumbs-up on Facebook is all you need,” he laughs), but also the technology he used to make the album.
“Everything that I do on there, I can do with turntables, but I’m doing it on technology” he explains. “I don’t want to be that old school guy. I’ve learned through this process and picked up some new tricks and tools, and I want to be able to use the skills I have.”
If it seems ironic that a record about human-robot love couldn’t have been made without modern technology, that’s all part of MU$A’s point.
“It’s like a satire of myself,” he says. “I’m a lonely hard ass and I can’t find anyone to love me.”
Analog Space will release “My Robot Girlfriend” tonight at the Meadowlark (2701 Larimer St) as part of its spring season launch party. MU$A will perform a live set, with accompaniment from bassist and keyboardist Doug Anderson. will also lay down a set of downtempo tracks. Doors open at 9 p.m. The first 50 people in the door will receive a limited edition CD pressing of the album in a biodegradable package, with original artwork by Black and fellow Denver artist Joshua Mays.
Eryc Eyl is a veteran music journalist, critic and Colorado native who has been neck-deep in local music for many years. Check out every Monday for local music you can HEAR, and the every Friday. Against his mother’s advice, Eryc has also been known to . You can also follow Sorry, Mom.
